Municipal

Departments - Newsworthy

Recycling Partnership accepts applications for 2016 Access Grant

The Recycling Partnership, Falls Church, Virginia, has released its latest request for proposal (RFP), which is intended to help counties, municipalities, tribes and solid waste authorities with 4,000 or more households upgrade to cart-based collection of recyclables.

The grants will provide funding for recycling carts, tailored educational materials and technical assistance from the Recycling Partnership’s staff. Successful applicants must provide comprehensive curbside recycling collection programs, meaning all homes that receive curbside garbage services must receive a recycling cart to be eligible for this grant. Additional details and eligibility requirements can be found in the RFP.

Potential applicants may email questions to the Recycling Partnership’s Project Director Karen Bandhauer at kbandhauer@ recyclingpartnership.org by March 31, 2016, at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Final proposals must be received electronically by 5 p.m. Eastern time April 15, 2016.

Alabama city in negotiations to reclaim shuttered mixed-waste processing facility

An article in the Montgomery Advertiser notes the city has started the foreclosure process on the center. An auction scheduled for Feb. 17, 2016, was postponeed, with Strange saying city officials are negotiating with the facility owners to avoid the action through an “amicable transfer of title.”

The owner of the Infinitus Renewable Energy Park (IREP), Plantation, Florida-based Infinitus Energy, closed the facility in October 2015.

Strange says that if a title transfer of the property can occur at minimal cost, the city would be able to issue a request for proposal to find a facility operator.

Appeals court rules Indiana violated competitive bidding laws

In a Feb. 24 decision, the Court of Appeals of Indiana decided the city of Indianapolis violated competitive bidding laws when it awarded a long-term recycling contract to Covanta in 2014.

The appeals case was filed by Graphic Packaging International, Rock-Tenn Converting Co. (now WestRock) and resident Cathy Weinmann. The defendants were the city of Indianapolis and city of Indianapolis Public Works.

The decision reversed a lower court ruling that favored the defendants and ordered the Marion Superior Court to void the deal Indianapolis made with Morristown, New Jersey-based Covanta to build a $45 million recycling facility that would process mixed waste next door to its waste-to-energy facility.

According to the court’s 19-page decision, “By including provisions related to the design, construction and maintenance of this new facility, the amendment fell under the purview of section 4 of the Waste Disposal Statute, which requires among other things, public bidding and public participation in the process. That did not occur. Therefore the contract is void for failing to comply with the statute.”

Just two weeks earlier, on Feb. 10, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced the city of Indianapolis and Covanta Indianapolis Inc. had reached an agreement to temporarily suspend a proposed “advanced recycling center” (ARC). The facility was to be located on Morristown, New Jersey-based Covanta’s Indianapolis campus.

“Leadership begins with listening, and I believe Indianapolis deserves a true community conversation before we move forward with any waste and recycling plan,” Hogsett said when the agreement with Covanta was announced Feb. 10. “I appreciate Covanta’s willingness to agree to this effort as we work toward a long-term solution that best serves our neighborhoods and our environment.”

In earlier statements about the project, Covanta claimed the new mixed-waste processing facility would have increased the amount of material recycled in Indianapolis by up to 500 percent at no cost to the city or to its residents.

Metals

Departments - Newsworthy

Report blames nickel’s price woes on Chinese collateral holders

Chinese “shadow bankers” may have been scared away from using copper as collateral after abuses of the practice were exposed in 2014, but the same tactics may again be in use, this time with primary nickel being held in deep inventory.

An online article posted by Reuters Feb. 9, 2016, describes nickel pricing trends in the context of the movement of large volumes of nickel plate from Russia to China.

In the article, Reuters reporter Andy Home says the outflow of nickel plate from Russia to China is not currently matched by the consumption of such nickel in China or by the listed inventories of such plate in Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) warehouses.

After metals in inventory in Qingdao, China, were discovered in 2014 to have been overextended as pledged collateral, the Chinese government was thought to have reacted by restricting the practice.

“It seems, though, that while the collateral trade has been much reduced in metals such as copper, it is still flourishing for nickel, albeit with much tighter lending and storage controls,” writes Home.

The low prices may not be tied directly to industrial supply and demand but instead to investors and speculators.

Novelis sees record automotive shipments in 3Q of fiscal 2016

Atlanta-based Novelis has reported net income of $6 million for the third quarter of its 2016 fiscal year. Excluding tax-effected special items, the company reported net income of $32 million for the period compared with $54 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2015.

Excluding the impact of metal price lag in both quarters, adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $238 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2016, up 4 percent compared with $228 million in the prior year. Novelis says the increase was driven by higher shipments of automotive and beverage can sheet, partially offset by less favorable recycling benefits in light of depressed aluminum prices as compared with the prior year. Current year results also reflect higher fixed costs associated with new automotive and recycling operations, the company notes.

Shipments of rolled aluminum products grew 3 percent to 779 kilotonnes in the third quarter of fiscal 2016 as compared with 757 kilotonnes reported in the prior-year period.

Despite higher shipments, revenue decreased 17 percent to $2.4 billion for the third quarter of fiscal 2016, driven by significantly lower average aluminum prices and local market premiums, Novelis says.

While average local market metal premiums stabilized during the quarter, Novelis reports negative metal price lag of $26 million as it continued to turn higher average metal cost inventory from previous months. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of fiscal 2016 including metal price lag was $212 million.

Novelis reports negative $12 million of free cash flow in the third quarter of fiscal 2016, which is what it reported in the third quarter of fiscal 2015.

Capital expenditures totaled $78 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2016, down from $104 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2015.

ISRI requests South China container theft investigation

The Washington-based Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) has prepared an 11-page report on the theft of scrap metal—predominantly copper—from shipping containers in Hong Kong and South China and is presenting the document to federal law enforcement agencies.

The document includes the results of a survey of ISRI members, who reported to the organization having been victims in nearly 550 such incidents with a financial impact of more than $2 million from 2011 to 2013.

The information ISRI collected points to specific ports and trans-shipment sites as being the epicenters of the crime wave. “The surveys suggest that most cargo thefts have involved shipments that were transshipped from ports in or around Hong Kong to inland ports within the Pearl River Delta, Guangdong province,” the report states. “For 2013, roughly 60 percent of the total suspected cargo theft incidents involved five ports within the Pearl River Delta: Sihui/Mafang (131 incidents), Zhaoqing (35), Sanshui (17), Wuzhou (nine) and Nanhai (six),” ISRI says.

The number of thefts from containers in that region more than doubled in 2013 compared with 2011, ISRI’s survey results indicate.

ISRI staff members, including Director of Government & International Affairs Eric Harris and Director of Law Enforcement Outreach Brady Mills, have been communicating with the State Department’s Overseas Advisory Council (OSAC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the nature and the extent of the problem.

In July 2015, a scrap processor operating in Nanhai in South China reported to the police and to a local television station his investigation into a local scrap container theft ring.

That same processor told Recycling Today in late January 2016 that since the arrest of the people involved in that theft ring, he has not been the victim of any new container theft incidents.

The fair market value of SDI’s metals recycling operations was determined to be less than its carrying value in light of the weak global scrap commodity outlook, SDI states in a Dec. 16, 2015, press release. Upon completion of the final assessment, the book value of its metals recycling segment was impaired, resulting in noncash goodwill and related asset impairment charges of $435 million.

Comparatively, 2014 fourth quarter net sales were $2.5 billion, with adjusted net income of $97 million, or 40 cents per diluted share, which excluded the impact of noncash asset impairment and purchase accounting charges of 59 cents per diluted share, the company says. Sequential third quarter 2015 net sales were $2 billion, with net income of $61 million, or 25 cents per diluted share.

“The fourth quarter 2015 market environment was one of the most challenging in recent history for our steel and metals recycling operations,” said Mark D. Millett, SDI CEO. “The domestic steel industry operated at production rates below 65 percent in November and December, representing the lowest levels this year caused by ongoing pressure from unfairly traded steel imports, customer destocking and seasonally lower demand.

He continued, “Enabled by our diversified and value-added product portfolio, our steel operations were again able to maintain a higher-than-industry-average production utilization rate at 73 percent for the fourth quarter 2015.”

SDI says steel imports continued to flood the domestic market during the fourth quarter 2015, though the levels were somewhat lower than experienced earlier in 2015. Coupled with seasonally lower demand and buyer hesitancy related to uncertain raw material markets, steel and metals recycling shipments declined.

Fourth quarter 2015 operating income for SDI’s steel operations decreased 47 percent to $67 million sequentially in light of a 12 percent decrease in shipments. In addition, average steel product pricing declined more than consumed raw material scrap costs, resulting in slight steel metal spread compression, SDI notes. The fourth quarter 2015 average product selling price for its steel operations decreased $51 to $614 per ton, while the average ferrous scrap cost per ton melted decreased $47 to $205 per ton.

Features - Tire Recycling Update

Quality counts, particularly in rubberized asphalt applications that use recycled rubber. The ability to provide a fine, high-quality terminal blend material opens the door to marketing to a range of highway engineers who require something better than the typical site blend.

State Rubber & Environmental Solutions recently upgraded its processing system to allow it to produce high-volume, high-quality recycled crumb rubber for use in terminal blend rubberized asphalt (RA). In doing so, the company has broadened its footprint.

“One of State Rubber’s strengths is the ability to custom manufacture specific crumb rubber blends for the various asphalt design mixes used by most states, as well as several other products’ specifications,” says Jerry Woosley, vice president of the Denver City, Texas, company.

State Rubber was born of the need of tire dealers in west Texas and eastern New Mexico to dispose of scrap tires. Today, about 90 percent of the plant’s production goes to RA. With the price of oil being low, Woosley says he expects the demand for rubber modified asphalt products to increase accordingly.

“State agencies will want to take advantage of cheaper asphalt prices,” he says.

Texas and New Mexico currently are using rubber-modified asphalt in various applications in the states’ highways.

A New Mexico task force studying RA in 2009 strongly recommended that a scrap tire processing operation be developed in the state. It pointed to the benefits of eliminating the growing stockpiles of tires dumped or landfilled. It encouraged assistance from the New Mexico Economic Development Department in this endeavor.

New Mexico developed specifications for several tire-rubber-modified asphalt products for use in its roads.

Texas has used crumb-rubber-modified asphalt in terminal blend and wet process applications, including chip seal, fog seal, crack seal and hot-mix, for many years.

State Rubber has been expanding its production capabilities over the past five years. That expansion is projected to culminate in a doubling of the plant’s original production capacity over the next three years, according to the company.

“Our plan is to increase the capacity of the plant to meet a slow but steady increase in crumb rubber sales,” Woosley says.

Photo courtesy of Granutech Saturn Systems

State Rubber has two main seasons. In the winter months, the company accumulates material. In the summer months, prime highway construction season, State Rubber ships its crumb rubber for RA like there is no tomorrow. Its challenge is to accumulate enough material from roughly November until April to allow it to keep up with demand through the summer months.

Most systems to produce crumb rubber from used tires are either three-stage or four-stage plants. State Rubber uses a four-stage process that allows the company to produce a consistent, high-quality product of the size required for terminal blend, which is less than 40 mesh.

A LOOK AT THE PROCESS

“Our expansion began downstream and is progressing upstream to the granulator and will culminate with the addition of a second mill line,” Woosley says.

The expansion began by addressing material screening and storage. “We knew those would have to be in place to accommodate added production,” he says.

State Rubber currently is designing the granulator phase of its expansion. It will incorporate a Super 80 Grizzly manufactured by Granutech Saturn Systems, Grand Prairie, Texas.

While many tire processing facilities sort and sell used tires as an additional revenue stream, State Rubber has chosen to forgo the liability and the added expense of sorting to focus on providing a clean crumb rubber product instead.

The plant is divided into four size reduction processes and their related support equipment, starting with a twin-shaft hybrid-drive shredder.

That primary shredder is a 72-44-BGHT Saturn shredder that was modified to include a direct-drive power unit to increase the machine’s performance. Whole tires are reduced to chunks roughly the size of a fist, or a 4-inch-nominal chip, in this process and are conveyed into a walking floor bin to supply the secondary process.

Next, a Granutech Grizzly M-80 performs primary granulation. The M-80, which features 300 horsepower at 320 rpm, will take material down to the ¾-inch or 5/8-inch chip at the rate of up to 5 tons per hour. As the material exits the machine, it passes along a wire reclaimer and is conveyed to a walking floor.

The Grizzly performs the bulk of the required wire separation and some fiber removal. State Rubber also will recycle the steel fraction.

Secondary granulation is accomplished with a G-3 granulator. Material is reduced to ¼-inch minus (less than 0.6 millimeters) in this phase of the process. The 200-horsepower, 1,800-rpm Granutech G-3, with its two fly knives and three bed knives, is the key component in producing high-quality, fine rubber, according to State Rubber. At this point, residual steel is removed and almost all of the fiber is separated using air and screeners so it does not show up in the powder. The ¼-inch material is then conveyed into a storage bin.

The fourth and final size reduction system is a Refiner Mill and a closed-loop system that will process, clean and classify the crumb rubber before sending the material to a bagging system for packaging. Material can run through an 18-to-20-mesh screen or down to a 30-mesh screen. All of this runs at warp speed and still maintains specifications, according to the company.

It is not unusual for State Rubber to produce 40-mesh size, and some of the material produced can be as fine as an 80 mesh for specialty operations.

TIGHT TOLERANCES

At State Rubber, the upgraded tolerance requirements required for crumb rubber for use in RA applications put a double burden on the machinery.

While most size reduction mills at tire recycling operations use roller bushings, those at State Rubber have been replaced with roller bearings. This allows operations at tolerances down to 0.0025 inches versus 0.005 inches, or five times tighter than those with bushings.

Bearings have the advantage of producing less heat than bushings, and therefore can use captured greasing system to keep things cool without constant concern about lubrication.

The design change has been successful for State Rubber, the company says.

Granutech is expected to change future mill models to use bearings rather than bushings. Look for an announcement on this topic at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries 2016 Convention & Exposition in Las Vegas April 2-7.

State Rubber says it is pondering a move to a Granutech Saturn Systems Super-80 grinder that would allow the company to further expand processing, doubling its output.

BRIGHT FUTURE

One cloud associated with RA is cost. A New Mexico study found RA products tend to be more costly than traditional asphalt, with material and application costs varying from 10 percent to 16 percent higher. However, the same study’s life cycle cost analysis shows that Arizona, Texas and California realize greater efficiency in meeting comparative costs as a result of economies of scale.

Market generation by major asphalt users, such as state departments of transportation and larger municipalities, could produce similar economies-of-scale savings, the study group says.

Los Alamos County, New Mexico, trucks scrap tires to State Rubber for recycling at a cost of $1.50 per tire. The county passes that fee onto customers at its solid waste facility. The county recycles approximately 80 tons of tires per year.

Other communities in New Mexico also recycle tires at State Rubber at costs ranging from 82 cents to $1.41 per tire, depending on the number of tires recycled and the method of transport.

The New Mexico Department of Transportation Rubberized Asphalt Task Force felt strongly that the benefits of recycling should be factored into the overall cost of the use of RA. This adds to the appeal of RA’s performance and reduces long-term maintenance costs.

While highway asphalt products markets fight pricing issues, Woosley says the turf and playground markets have been under assault from news media and governmental agencies over the safety of crumb rubber use in those surfaces.

“If crumb rubber were toxic, then the millions of pounds of rubber worn off of tires on United States highways each year would be devastating to all of our health,” Woosley says. (While “white line fever” might be a staple of country songs, it certainly is not a tire-caused disease sickening drivers.)

State Rubber has a solid supply chain furnishing it with used tires. The company has placed 140 containers within a 300-mile radius of its plant for tire collection at landfills and at tire dealers of various sizes. It also has several transporters who haul tires they collect to its facility.

The entire chain—from suppliers through processing to highway departments—is based on sourcing, producing and paving with a high-quality RA product.

With its expanded processing line, State Rubber & Environmental Solutions says it is well-positioned to meet the needs of RA producers for the future.

The author is a contributing editor based in Cleveland. He can be contacted via email at curt@curtharler.com.

A world of possibilities amid challenges

Features - R2 Certification

Sustainable Electronics Recycling International summarizes its efforts to expand the footprint of R2 certification, as well as the organization’s broader goal of expanding the use of best practices in electronics recycling worldwide.

R2 (Responsible Recycling Standard for Electronics Recyclers) certification—the certification program for electronics recyclers based on the best management practices developed by a group of stakeholders convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—has made progress over the past several years. It is emerging as the most-used method of assessing responsible recycling practices in the electronics refurbishing and recycling sector in North America.

This progress begs the question, “Where do we go from here?”

Put another way, what are the most effective methods to promote responsible recycling practices in emerging economies, where they are needed most?

PIECEMEAL PROGRESS

Responsible repair and recycling practices are not widespread enough around the world to ensure that used electronics are managed sustainably, but some progress is being made.

Many countries, states and provinces and international bodies have enacted laws and regulations aimed at ensuring responsible management of used electronics. These vary in scope and quality of implementation but overall provide a positive effect on the management of used electronics. These lawmakers and regulators should be commended for their efforts.

However, at the opposite end of the spectrum, many jurisdictions are not addressing the problem. The wide disparity between these programs has produced a global network of managing used electronics that is rife with regulatory and enforcement gaps. Unfortunately, support for good repair and recycling best practices is inconsistent, and numerous incentives to process material “informally” are present, which obfuscates the true scale of the used electronics challenge.

In places where nascent support exists for responsible management of used electronics, signs of progress are visible. Chinese regulators are cleaning up the infamous e-scrap slums of Guiyu, using enforcement and incentives to move recycling activities to a nearby industrial park, where the technologies employed and work conditions are better.

Elsewhere, India enacted national e-scrap legislation in 2011, though the country has struggled to implement the law and change the long-standing practices of businesses, consumers and recyclers. Discussions on the best way to do so dominate the country’s used electronics policy debate.

OEM (original equipment manufacturer) recycling vendor requirements have a positive effect on a number of electronics recyclers. In most cases, these requirements far exceed the local regulatory requirements and provide strong financial incentives for responsible recycling practices through vendor contracts and audits. Of course, these positive effects are limited in scope to companies that have a direct relationship with OEMs and their downstream partners.

ACCESS TO CERTIFICATION

In this fractured environment, the R2 certification program—and the best practices it promotes—has the potential to provide a more consistent framework in which refurbishing and recycling companies, and their customers, can manage used electronics.

The international growth of the certification program to date has been modest but encouraging. At the end of 2015, 550 facilities were R2 certified. Of these, slightly more than 10 percent are outside the United States, with at least one R2 facility present in 21 countries. 2016 will see additional growth in existing and in new countries. Significant interest in R2 certification exists in Latin America and Asia. And late in 2015, Sims Recycling Solutions became the first company to operate an R2 certified facility in the Middle East with the certification of its facility in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Also in 2015, SERI (Sustainable Electronics Recycling International) joined with several partners, including R2 Leader companies DirecTV, Sims Recycling Solutions and Oracle, and the consulting firm Greeneye Partners, to identify potential candidates in Latin America to assist in completing R2 certification. Facilities were selected in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador based on a variety of factors, including pre-existing certifications, such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001, established relationships with OEMs and a commitment to completing the certification process. Assistance to these facilities included the translation of the R2 Standard and supporting documents into Spanish and Portuguese, completion of a gap analysis at each site, assistance in developing an environmental health and safety management system (EHSMS) and preparing for their audits. R2 audits are scheduled to be completed for the sites in early 2016, and with the exception of Brazil, the facilities will be the first R2 certified sites in their countries.

Although this effort has been successful in providing direct assistance to participating facilities, the project has identified significant barriers to the growth of R2 certification in emerging markets. Specifically, these include:

Cost – The costs of completing R2 certification (i.e., an environmental health and safety certification, management system, consultant costs, auditor rates and travel, etc.) are acceptable to businesses in developed markets, such as the United States and Canada, but are not as affordable to businesses in emerging markets.

We can get a better sense of what recyclers in emerging markets might be able to pay for certification services using purchasing power parity (PPP), a measure of the adjustment needed to a currency exchange rate for residents in each country to be able to purchase the same amount of goods or services on their respective domestic markets. For instance, the cost of implementing an EHSMS (a requirement of R2 certification) in the United States is approximately $6,000, or 24,310 Brazilian real. According to the World Bank, Brazil’s PPP ratio is 0.7, so for an EHSMS to be as “affordable” in Brazil as it is in the United States, it would need to be priced at $4,200 (at the time of this writing), or approximately 17,000 real.

By not adjusting prices to reflect the local market, certification is effectively more expensive in these countries, creating a major impediment to its adoption.

Infrastructure – R2 certification requires services and professionals to support certification. These include consultants to assist with the certification process, insurance providers (pollution insurance is required by R2) and accredited auditors.

At the onset of SERI’s project to assist Latin American recyclers, the nearest Spanish and Portuguese speaking auditors accredited to perform R2 audits were in Mexico. A Sao Paulo-based auditor has been trained, but the general lack of local auditors contributed to higher costs.

Market Pressure – Another factor influencing R2’s international growth is market pressure. Certification is strong and continues to grow in North America in part because of the high number of certified facilities. This creates a market incentive for facilities to pursue R2 certification because doing so enables them to compete more effectively with the large number of certified firms. In many emerging markets, this pressure does not exist.

As SERI works to expand the footprint of R2 certification internationally, we will be working with local stakeholders to establish the requisite infrastructure to support certification, to lower the costs of getting certified and to identify enthusiastic “first-adopters” willing to jump-start certification in these new markets.

USING BEST PRACTICES

While there may be a need and a desire for certification programs for electronics recyclers, including R2, in emerging economies, significant challenges are present. Economic, regulatory, technological and cultural dynamics in some developing countries make certification difficult or impossible to implement, as I have noted. In fact, certification is possible only in emerging markets that are relatively mature with respect to these dynamics. In many markets this is not the case, and used electronics too often are managed using unsafe and unsustainable practices.

Understanding the true scope of this problem and taking steps to address it are incredibly complicated issues relative to simply expanding R2 certification.

Nonetheless, SERI sees an opportunity to create positive change in this space. Specifically, in markets where used electronics are poorly regulated and dominated by informal processing, there is an opportunity to partner with local NGOs (nongovernment organizations), regulatory agencies and small to midsized recyclers to improve the use of best practices. This necessitates an assessment of the current informal recycling practices in each market and tailored education, outreach, training and documentation for each.

These country-level assessments and developing relationships with recycling stakeholders in these emerging markets ideally will support the spread of environmental, health and safety practices in repair and recycling. SERI plans to continue to work on identifying the needs of these markets and potential local partners throughout 2016 and beyond.

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

SERI is scratching the surface of the challenges posed by managing used electronics in emerging markets, and it will take many years, the participation of multiple stakeholders and foundational shifts in the electronics recycling landscape before this problem begins to be addressed effectively.

We are committed to continuing to work with the global electronics recycling community to meet these challenges. Progress has been made, but we still have a long way to go.

Henry Leineweber is operations director for Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI), Boulder, Colorado. He provides operational support, project oversight and relationship management for SERI’s electronics repair and recycling projects around the world. SERI is a nonprofit dedicated to the responsible reuse, repair and recycling of electronic products and the housing body for the R2 Standard.

On the upside

Features - Plastics Recycling Technology

The “upcycling” of plastic scrap can serve as a role model for sustainable resource efficiency, says an officer of Germany’s ALBA Group.

The success of our global economic system depends heavily on the intelligent use of raw materials. Faced with global resource depletion, manufacturers are increasingly turning to recycled raw materials.

The total production of plastics topped 311 million tons worldwide in 2014. Plastics are in almost everything we use. Yet even at the end of their service, plastics still are far too valuable to just throw away. Some can be recycled into the same or a different product. Others can be used for energy recovery or as a substitute for fossil fuels. About one-third of the world’s countries already recycle or recover more than 80 percent of their plastics, whereas many lag far behind, and some fall short of their own legislative targets.

Today, recycled plastics already make a major contribution to meeting resource efficiency targets. Interseroh Dienstleistungs GmbH, a subsidiary of German recycling firm ALBA Group and one of the leading environmental services and raw material providers worldwide, converts recycled plastics into high-quality plastic granules.

The process exclusively uses secondary resources from household collections and industry and turns them through upcycling into materials with a quality comparable with the properties of new materials. Interseroh’s award-winning plastics recompound, Procyclen, matches virgin material in properties and quality and is a fully customizable, safe, sustainable and cost-effective secondary raw material suitable for quality plastics products.

Dr. Manica Ulcnik-Krump

CLOSING THE LOOP, NOT ENDING IT

Though plastics often are touted as recyclable, in reality many of them are “downcycled” and end up in low-end applications. Such materials perform poorly in reprocessing, and the end product can age faster when exposed to heat and weathering.

On the other hand, today’s manufacturers most often demand materials that meet high quality standards and boast competitive or even better properties than virgin material. This demand created a need for innovative recycling technologies that guarantee the development of high-quality, tailor-made products derived completely from recycled material as a substitute for virgin plastic.

With its unique closed-loop method called “recycled-resource,” Interseroh took a new approach and implemented a recycling process that turns impure, low-quality mixed plastic packaging scrap into high-quality, tailor-made compounds without compromising quality, thereby lending plastic material a second lease of life.

MULTIPLE STEPS AND STAGES

Generally speaking, used plastic material cannot simply be reused because it is sourced from mixed municipal waste streams of unknown origin.

The Interseroh recycled-resource process follows up high-tech sorting with a unique recompounding sequence featuring extrusion, restabilization, molecular structure rebuilding and chemical modification. A key final step is to achieve material performance that exactly conforms to the customer’s strict specifications.

Additives and modifiers are combined to obtain specific complementary effects and interactions for a top-quality end product with enhanced structure and properties. Unlike lower-quality reclaimed plastics, Procyclen is a full match to virgin material in properties and quality.

America advances significantly, ACC says

The “upcycling” efforts of Germany’s ALBA Group are making a difference in that nation, and the initiative is far from isolated, according to the American Chemistry Council (ACC). The Plastics Division of the Washington-based trade organization says American companies also are stepping up their plastic recycling efforts in statistically measurable ways.

Postconsumer rigid plastics recycling increased by 138,000 tons, or 27 percent, in 2014 to reach a new high of more than 640,000 for the year, according to an ACC report released in early February 2016. The “2014 National Postconsumer Non-Bottle Rigid Plastic Recycling Report” also indicates the reported volume of recycled rigid plastics—tracked separately from bottles or film—is now four times greater than the volume reported seven years ago in 2007.

The rigid plastics category contains food containers, caps, lids, tubs, clamshells, cups and bulky items, such as buckets, carts and lawn furniture, along with used commercial scrap, such as crates, battery casings and drums, the ACC says. Typical end markets for these materials include automotive parts, crates, buckets, pipe, lawn and garden products and thick-walled injection molded products.

“This is really exciting news,” says Steve Russell, vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council (ACC). “The combination of more advanced sorting technologies coupled with expanded consumer access is making a positive difference, and we look forward to seeing growth in rigid plastics recycling continue.”

The ACC and Sonoma, California-based consulting firm Moore Recycling Associates, which helped prepare the report, attribute much of the strong gain to a rebound from the 2013 Green Fence effort in China, improved bale quality and growing standardization of plastics bales—the unit by which plastic scrap is sold after collection.

The source of nonbottle rigid plastics collected with the biggest increase in 2014 was the prepicked bale, which is generated from municipal programs and contains a mixture of products with bottles removed. Polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) comprised the two largest resins in this category, representing 38.3 percent and 34.1 percent, respectively, of total rigid plastics collected.

Approximately 64 percent of the 640,000 tons of rigid plastics collected for recycling were processed in the United States or Canada, down slightly from 2013. The remainder was exported overseas, primarily to China, the report notes.

A separate report also released in early February found a minimum of 585,000 tons of postconsumer plastic film were recycled in 2014, an increase of more than 14,500 tons, or 3 percent, from the prior year.

The “2014 National Postconsumer Plastic Bag and Film Recycling Report,” also authored by Moore Recycling, describes a 79 percent increase in plastic film recycling since 2005. Based on data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the recycling rate for film has grown from 6.6 percent to 17 percent of production during the 10-year period, the ACC says.

The plastic film category includes commercial film packaging and consumer wraps and bags—all made primarily from thin, flexible sheets of polyethylene. Of the film collected for recycling in 2014, approximately 45 percent was processed in the United States or Canada, with the remainder going primarily to China, the report notes.

Primary uses for recycled plastic film include composite lumber, new film and sheet, agricultural products, crates, buckets and pallets.

“Continued expansion of a healthy sorting and processing infrastructure and further development of end markets for recycled materials are essential for building on recent gains,” says Patty Moore, president of Moore Recycling. – Recycling Today staff

More and more producers are selecting Procyclen for their new products. One of the first product lines Interseroh developed, together with a leading European manufacturer of resin household products, was a line of boxes, baskets and bins.

In 2014 Interseroh developed a renewed correction and glue roller packaging where the back of each case consists of customized Procyclen produced from polystyrene. As best practice examples, these products show that producers are willing and able to manufacture responsibly—and to use high-quality recycled-content materials that meet their strict specifications as a sustainable resource.

In the case of declining natural deposits for some raw materials, the development of such uses for scrap materials is without alternative. In Germany alone, each year companies process raw materials to the value of $565 billion (€500 billion).

This figure reveals the savings potential through efficiency raising measures: a 20 percent rise in material efficiency would lead to a savings of $113 billion (€100 billion).

Entrepreneurs already count the development of energy and raw material prices as one of the biggest risks over the next years. The recycling of discarded materials is one necessary answer to this, and its importance will rise in the approaching years.

Taking this development into account, new technologies such as Interseroh’s recycled-resource process will become more and more important to a sustainable, competitive economy and society.

RESOURCE EFFICIENCY IN EVERY RESPECT

Plastic products account for just 4 percent of fossil fuel consumption. Paradoxically, using more plastics actually would cut overall fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions—and contrary to popular belief, using less would boost overall fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Interseroh’s recycled-resource upcycling process not only offers an economically sound option of high-quality plastic raw material supply but also protects natural resources and the environment.

Additives and modifiers are combined to obtain specific complementary effects and interactions for a top-quality end product with enhanced structure and properties. Unlike lower-quality reclaimed plastics, Procyclen is a full match to virgin material in properties and quality.

Compared with primary products, plastic recompounds such as Procyclen have the advantage that no crude oil is used during the production process, the energy input is significantly reduced and the emission of climate damaging and ecologically harmful greenhouse gases is cut by up to 50 percent.

The first new products made from Procyclen, including laundry baskets and transport crates, already bear this label. This is a visible sign of environmental protection and resource efficiency.

Interseroh’s innovations for high-quality recycled materials show that a closed loop for plastics is indeed possible—and that far from being a low-grade surrogate, recycled-content plastics can be a new resource with increased market value. By constantly doing more with less, using plastics also tends to lower the consumption of raw materials. Not only does this boost resource efficiency, it also provides consumers with increasingly cost efficient answers to their needs.

The author is head of R&D at the BU Recycled-Resource division of Interseroh Dienstleistungs GmbH, which is part of the ALBA Group, www.albagroup.de.